The college was established in 1769 by Congregational minister Eleazar Wheelock who wanted to use the college to Christianize the Native Americans. In 2004, Booz Allen Hamilton selected Dartmouth College as a model of institutional endurance "whose record of endurance has had implications and benefits for all American organizations, both academic and commercial," citing Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward and Dartmouth's successful self-reinvention in the late 1800s.[11] Dartmouth alumni, from Daniel Webster to the many donors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have been famously involved in their college.[12]

Dartmouth is on a rural 269-acre (1.1 km²) campus in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire. Given the College's isolated location, participation in athletics and the school's Greek system is high.[13] Dartmouth's 34 varsity sports teams compete in the Ivy League conference of the NCAA Division I. Students are also well known for preserving a variety of strong campus traditions.[14][15][16][17]